Protestor heckles Pit Preacher

An unidentified man who went head-to-head with the controversial Pit Preacher Gary Birdsong faced a warning from the Department of Public Safety’s penal system Tuesday.

The shirtless individual – whose student status could not be confirmed — had a homosexual slur painted on his chest and a dildo sticking out of his pants. He approached Birdsong and simulated masturbation while waving the sex toy at the preacher.

When someone reported the incident to the Student Union, the demonstrator was taken into the Union. Student employees stood with him until DPS arrived to trespass him from campus.

“I think normally we would say, ‘Okay, you’re both going to exercise your right to free speech,’ until such time that somebody seems to think something is out of control,” said Joe Singer, senior associate director of events management at the Student Union.

“Our office is supposed to be content-neutral. Our role is to provide the space to speak.”

Posting on Facebook under the name “Unc DildoBoy,” the demonstrator stated his actions were not made as an attack on Birdsong or anti-gay sentiments, but on a technologically driven, post-industrial civilization. The individual did not give a real name to be interviewed.

While he refused to speak on the record, he posted a letter explaining his actions on the Facebook page.

“Because of the total penetration of mass media, humans on YouTube or Facebook, or people who are TV stars or politicians are put in a situation we humans are simply incapable of dealing with,” he wrote.

DPS spokesman Randy Young said if a person on campus is engaged in a situation or activity that could be considered provocative, results in harm to anyone or interferes with operations of the University or another person’s free speech, DPS may get involved. It is then at the discretion of the responding officers whether the disruptive individual is removed from a specific area like the Pit or from campus entirely, he said.

Cathy Packer, a professor who specializes in media law, said legally the Pit falls under what is considered a dedicated or limited forum. That means UNC, as a public university, can limit the forum for certain topics or speakers as long as it does not favor one viewpoint over another.

Packer said although she wholeheartedly disagrees with what the demonstrator did, she supports his First Amendment rights. She said his actions would not fall under a judicial definition of obscenity, but that it is irrelevant if he was removed for trespassing.

“My view about all of that is that the reason people come to Carolina is to see and hear things they didn’t hear at home,” Packer said.

“You go to Carolina and see some of what the rest of the world looks like and all the opinions other people have that your parents didn’t have.”

In New York City’s Central Park Zoo, a group of cotton-top tamarins — cute, social, squirrel-sized monkeys — has been caught whispering in the presence of zoo staff they do not like.

According to a new study published in the journal Zoo Biology, researchers have discovered in these tamarins the first example of whispering by nonhuman primates. While investigating the monkeys’ human-directed mobbing calls, whereby the tamarins attempt to confuse would-be predators with loud cries, researchers noticed that the monkeys actually lowered the amplitude of their vocalizations in the presence of one particular zookeeper.

Turns out the zookeeper had been involved in the tamarins’ capture and had also taken part in medical procedures involving the animals. And while the researchers weren’t able to explain just exactly what the monkeys were communicating under their breath in the staffer’s presence, it’s worth noting that every revolution begins with conspiratorial whispers.

Just south of the “New York” and “Pennsylvania” border a battle is raging to defend the Loyalsock state forest in what isknown as Sullivan County, PA, about a half hour north of what is known as the city of Williamsport which lies at the southernmost part of traditional Haudenosaunee Confederacy territory. The high elevation wetlands, and mature forest ecosystems of Loyalsock are home to rare and threatened species such as the Timber Rattlesnake, Northern Water Shrew, Wild Sasparilla, and carnivorous Pitcher Plants. 114,494 acres of this lush forest sit atop the Marcellus Shale, an underground formation that spans from West Virginia to as far north as Ithaca, NY. Houston based corporation Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (APC) has been craving to penetrate this shale formation. APC has proposed developing 26 fracking well-padsalong with multiple pipelines, access roads, and other supporting infrastructure which are poised to devastate the lively streams that sustain all animal and plant life in the Loyalsock. In nearby, Sproul State Forest, Anadarko has spilled over 12,000 gallons of carcinogenic drilling mud. Andarko was also a key investor in British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in 2010 killing 11 workers and releasing 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico forever altering the ecosystem. APC was ordered to pay $272 million towards cleaning up the Gulf. Anadarko refused.

People united under the banner of, Marcellus Shale Earth First! (MSEF!), whose tagline is, “No Drilling! No Compromise!”, have sworn to defend the Loyalsock forest from Anadarko’s ecocidal ways. On September 13th, two weeks ago today, the first aerial blockade was erected at the site of a proposed well pad. Should Anadarko continue with their plans, activists say there could be many more blockades in this forest. High in the canopy of the forest sits a brave tree sitter on a platform who chooses to identify themselves as Hellbender, the name of the giant salamander of the North East who makes it’s home in the Loyalsock forest. Continue reading →

The planned Rosemont Copper Mine just south of Tucson isn’t the only mining controversy in Arizona.

It isn’t even the biggest.

About 100 miles north of Tucson, Resolution Copper Mining wants to build a mine in Superior, a town of 2,800 people, that could yield 1 billion pounds of copper a year. That’s more than four times the projected output for Rosemont Copper’s planned mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, which would produce an estimated 243 million pounds of copper annually.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection confirmed that a chemical spill from Eastern Associated Coal, a Patriot subsidiary, turned a river off Pond Fork Rd. in Wharton a milky shade of white.

More than 2,000 gallons of a white substance, called DT-50-D, spilled into the river after a spill that occurred some time after 10 p.m. Sept. 4.

The substance is generally used as a suppressant to cover coal and rail cars to cut down on the dust they can spread. Its consistency has the appearance of milky latex.

A repeat sex offender named Robert Joe Childs has been outed as an FBI and Seattle Police Department informant infiltrating activist groups in the Pacific Northwest, including Salish CIRCA. He has been reported seen in Portland, Oregon, and Puyallup, Washington.

While details about the cases of his sexual assault convictions are unknown at this time, Childs’s sex offender status explains a few of the likelihoods: “[offenders] may not know their victim(s). The crime may show a manifest cruelty to the victim(s) and these offenders usually deny or minimize the crime”

Born around 1976, Robert Joe Childs led a relatively off-the-map until March 3, 1995. He was 22, and he had just been convicted of his first sexual assault: Rape in the Third Degree, in other words, forced, coercive sex. Two years later, he was convicted of his second and third offences: Child molestation in the third degree and failure to register as a sex offender. Convicted for sexual assault again no more than four years later, Childs was just 25, and he had three felony sexual assault convictions in the span of just over six years. The next time we see Childs is just ten years later, and he is working for the FBI.